I've written extensively about getting Free Oneways on United Awards. Yesterday I got an email from a foreign reader, asking whether he could get a free oneway on his United awards. Seeing no theoretical reason why not, I looked into it and found you can get free oneways on roundtrip United awards regardless of their origin.

I thought I'd share this because even for US-based flyers, this discovery can have value.

€35 for one of the twelve beds in this room and a shared bathroom down the hall (St. Christopher's Inn, Paris):

$35 for this room, bathroom, welcome chocolates, and drink voucher (Holiday Inn, Krakow):

How did I get a room for $35? I bought the points from Priority Club for 0.7 cents each and exploited their PointBreaks List of steeply discounted award nights.

Points and know-how are getting me a three-day reprieve from hostels at hostel prices. Now if only the Holiday Inn had as fun of a bar as St.

I just arrived in Krakow for about 72 hours with hotel reservations but no real plan or guidebook. Any tips on what to do, see, or eat would be greatly appreciated.

In my trip report of BA business from Tampa to London, I mentioned offhandedly that a lot of people could find value in AA awards with a stopover in the Caribbean on the way to Europe even after paying the $300 fuel surcharge for flying British Airways on an AA award.

Astute reader Francisco C pointed out that although one example I gave--LAX to Cancun, stopover, Cancun to London (and beyond)--was pricing as a free stopover on aa.com, the Caribbean stopover options I had claimed were possible were not booking as free stopovers.

Right now on taca.com, you can get a roundtrip from LAX to Lima for $238. This appears to be good from September through November. Peru is one of my favorite countries in the world. Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca, Amazon Rainforest, world's deepest canyon, incredible history, gastronomy, great beaches, and on and on and on.

If you want to book, book now. This fare will disappear any moment. I just booked a two week trip for $238!

See the flyertalk thread here.

US Airways and American Airlines have merged since the publication of this post so it is no longer valid.

US Airways and United are both members of the Star Alliance, so many times you can redeem miles from either carrier for the exact same trip. In those situations, which miles should you use?

I've made a list of some clear situations to favor one mile over the other. The list can also be read as a list of situations to collect US miles versus situations to collect United miles though.

Anatomy of an Award: Booking this Trip

AA First Class: Los Angeles to Tampa

BA Business Class: Tampa to London (LGW)

A Day in London: Gatwick to London to Heathrow to Paris

When booking an award with AA miles, you cannot select your seats on BA planes until 24 hours before departure. About 21 hours before departure, I logged into BA.com and gave my six digit confirmation code. Almost all the seats had been selected, but I still had some choice.

I checked the seatguru map for the plane I was flying, a 3-class Boeing 777.

Edit: Thanks to the commenters who checked the Membership Rewards site ad found that the ability to transfer between MR and Avios has returned at a 1:1 transfer ratio.

Just now at 10:40 AM Paris time, 4:40 AM ET, and 1:40 AM PT, I logged into Membership Rewards to see if the 50% transfer bonus between Membership Rewards and Avios had really ended.

I have already written a post about the rules of free stopovers on American Airlines awards

Anatomy of an Award: Booking this Trip

AA First Class: Los Angeles to Tampa

BA Business Class: Tampa to London (LGW)

A Day in London: Gatwick to London to Heathrow to Paris

A few weeks ago, as part of my Anatomy of an Award series, I wrote about booking the award I'm flying right now: Los Angles to Paris with a stopover in Tampa. In this post, I'll talk about my domestic first class trip from LAX to Dallas to Tampa.

I traveled to the airport in my usual way, a limo from the casino.